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Note from The Great One: Gretzky emails congratulations to Simon Whitfield

The name Simon Whitfield envisioned across his back while playing street hockey as a kid showed up in his email’s inbox just prior to the Olympic Games.

Canada's flagbearer Simon Whitfield got an email from hockey great Wayne Gretzky. It said "congratulations on carrying the flag,’” the triathlete said Sunday. “That was so cool.”
(OLIVIER MORIN / AFP)

By Donna Spencer The Canadian Press

Sun., Aug. 5, 2012

The name Simon Whitfield envisioned across his back while playing street hockey as a kid showed up in his email’s inbox just prior to the Olympic Games.

“Wayne Gretzky emailed me and said ‘congratulations on carrying the flag,’” the triathlete said Sunday. “That was so cool.”

Whitfield bore the Maple Leaf into the opening ceremonies in London. The 37-year-old will race in his fourth Olympic triathlon Tuesday.

Whitfield won Olympic gold in 2000 and silver in 2008. Gretzky led the Edmonton Oilers to multiple Stanley Cups while Whitfield was in elementary school in Kingston, Ont.

When the ball and sticks came out, Whitfield and his childhood friend Ted would pretend they were one of the Oiler superstars. Whitfield says he was often Gretzky’s linemate Jari Kurri.

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“You weren’t allowed to be No. 99 on the street,” Whitfield recalled. “We’d always brawl over who would be Wayne Gretzky. Ted’s dad came out one day and said ‘nobody gets to be Wayne Gretzky’ just so we’d stop fighting about it.”

Whitfield received Gretzky’s message about a week before the Games. Whitfield was checking his email and did a double-take.

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